In the wake of the Bruen decision, gun control activists and anti-gun politicians unanimously declared that allowing more Americans to exercise their right to bear arms would have deadly consequences. When Donald Trump took office and shut down the White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention and rescinded hundreds of millions of dollars in grants to “gun violence prevention” efforts, those same folks predicted that American cities would become more dangerous places.
Instead, it looks like the United States was safer in 2025 than it has been since the FBI started keeping track of nationwide crime stats in 1960. The New York Times’ report on the staggering decline in violent crime is full of attempts to discredit Trump from having any positive impact on the crime rate, but it also ignores the fact that the decline was the exact opposite of what the gun control lobby and their political allies had predicted.
Last year will likely register the lowest national homicide rate in 125 years and the largest single-year drop on record, according to a new analysis of 2025 crime data.
Violence has been falling for several years. But last year for the first time, all seven categories of violent crime tracked by the analysis fell below prepandemic levels. The numbers provide further evidence that the surge in violence in the early 2020s was a departure during a time of massive social upheaval, not a new normal.
The analysis of data from 40 cities, by the Council on Criminal Justice, a nonpartisan think tank, found across-the-board decreases in crime last year compared to 2019: 25 percent fewer homicides, 13 percent fewer shootings and 29 percent fewer carjackings. Between 2024 and 2025, only drug crimes went in the wrong direction, but they were still lower than in 2019.
… Experts said there is little to justify any claim that President Trump is responsible for last year’s drop in crime.
“There are many more cities that didn’t have the National Guard that saw their crime go down than cities who had the National Guard who saw their crime go down,” said Alex Piquero, who served as head of the Bureau of Justice Statistics during the Biden administration and now teaches criminology at the University of Miami.
That’s true, and the FBI crime stats show the decline in violent crime started before Trump took office in early 2025, though researcher Dr. John Lott has disputed the FBI’s statistics during the Biden administration.
But even if you want to argue that President Trump isn’t responsible for the historic decline in violent crime, he certainly isn’t responsible for an increase in violent crime, anymore than the Supreme Court’s decision in Bruen.
The Times reports that, “of the 35 cities whose homicide rates were in the analysis, all but eight had a lower murder rate in 2025 than before the pandemic.” The cities where murders increased were Omaha and Lincoln, Nebraska; Louisville; Minneapolis; Milwaukee; Austin, Texas; Pittsburgh; and Little Rock, Arkansas. While Nebraska, Kentucky, and Texas all became permitless carry states between 2019 and 2025, the data shows all of those cities also saw substantial decreases in their homicide rates between 2024 and 2025.
Nebraska became a permitless carry state in 2023, for example, but it’s hard to blame permitless carry for the increase in murders in Lincoln and Omaha between 2019 and 2025 given that the homicide rate declined by 40% in Omaha and 16% in Lincoln between 2024 and 2025.
Utah adopted permitless carry in 2021, and Salt Lake City saw its murder rate drop by 47% between 2019 and 2025, with a 27% decline in its homicide rate between 2024 and 2025.
Cities in states that were forced to adopt “shall issue” carry laws uniformly saw their crime rates drop between 2024 and 2025, with cities like Buffalo, New York; Los Angeles, California; and Baltimore, Maryland all seeing reductions of more than 30%.
That simply wasn’t possible, according to the anti-gunners. More guns on the streets was supposed to mean more crime in these communities, but instead the opposite was true.
Even in terms of the broader category of “gun assaults,” the numbers are going in the right direction. The CCJ reports a 22% reduction in that category of crime nationwide in 2025, with a 13% reduction between 2019 and 2025 and a 44% decline from its peak in 2021.
More guns hasn’t equated to more crime. Quite the opposite. Crime has declined to record lows even as millions of Americans have embraced their right to keep and bear arms, as some states have dropped the requirement that gun owners obtain a government-issued permission slip to carry a firearm, and as others have been forced to stop denying permits to applicants who want to carry for self-defense.
I can understand why the NYTimes doesn’t want to inform its readers of just how woefully off-base the gun control activists and anti-gun politicians were with their predictions, but it’s important to shine a light on what they got wrong and why. Blinded by their animosity towards the Second Amendment and those who exercise the rights it protects, these prohibitionists are willing to ignore reality in order to demonize gun owners and blame them for an increase in crime that never happened.
Editor’s Note: The mainstream media continues to lie about gun owners and the Second Amendment.
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